Summary
Contents
Subject index
Social scientist, victim advocate, and herself, the mother of a murder victim, Deborah Spungen is well acquainted with all facets of what she defines as “the blackest hell accompanied by a pain so intense that even breathing becomes an unendurable labor.” In Homicide: The Hidden Victims, Spungen illustrates just how and why family members become co-victims when a loved one is murdered and she poignantly addresses the emotional, physical, spiritual, and psychological effects of such traumatic events. Until now, the extant literature has focused, primarily, on the perpetrator while impact on the “invisible victims” of crime has been overlooked. With limited services and/or advocacy available, co-victims have found their wounds compounded by confusion and a sense of aloneness in the ongoing aftermath of such a tragic event. Now in a breakthrough presentation, the author provides a wellspring of research, personal insight, and case examples that illuminate such critical issues that surround family notification, effects of murder on family and friends of the victim, media influences, traumatic grief, circumstantial influences, intervention and advocacy, the criminal justice system, and reconstruction and healing.
The timely information and innovative modalities discussed in this book make it ideal for mental health and criminal justice professionals, pastoral counselors, social workers, and victim advocates. It is an excellent training manual for recent graduates and new service providers and, due to its multidisciplinary approach, the book is invaluable for students, academics, researchers, and anyone interested in clinical and counseling psychology, social work, criminal justice, interpersonal violence, nursing, health care, or family studies.
Murder and the Family System
Murder and the Family System
This chapter reviews the special factors relating to the family system of someone who has been murdered. In general, caregivers and researchers have offered little recognition of such situational factors that affect co-victims. There is, for example, an insignificant body of research and literature that differentiates among the various influences on family members in the aftermath of a homicide. It is important, therefore, to look more in depth for the commonalities, the similarities, and the differences that situational factors within the family suggest and to consider all members of a co-victim's family in plans for recovery.
Common responses of co-victims and generalizable themes exist, although in varying degrees of intensity, regardless of the circumstances of the murder. ...
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